Adventures in Russia

Saint Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia, has undergone two name changes in its lifetime. Once known as Petrograd and Leningrad, it was founded in 1703 by Peter the Great. In 1944, it saw the end of a two year long blockade imposed by the Nazis, in which its residents were trapped in the city for nearly 900 days and nearly 1,500,000 people perished,, mostly of starvation. Today, it is still known as the deadliest siege in all of history.

However, today Saint Petersburg is a bustling tourist attraction filled with people who seem a whole lot happier and willing to smile at you than the people in Moscow.

We spent four days wonderful days in Saint Petersburg, seeing all of the sights from Hermitage, to Catherine the Great's Palace, to Peterhof, the palace of Peter the Great, the city's founder. Taking the overnight train from Moscow, which departed at 1AM, we traveled approximately ten hours to Saint Petersburg and arrived in the early afternoon.

One of the first sights we saw was the monastery of the Smolny Institute, where young girls were sent to study and blocked from seeing their parents for one year. The monastery is right around the corner from the actual building known as the Smolny Institute, from where the Russian Revolution began (Lenin gave the orders from the building to begin the bombardment of the city) that we visited on our last day in Saint Petersburg.


After visiting the monastery, we headed to the Church of the Savior on Blood, also known as the Church of Spilt Blood, where Tsar Alexander II was killed. According to my teacher, a gypsy predicted that there would be a certain number of attempts on his life before he would finally be killed. After I believe the 5th time (I believe there was a predicted 6 attempts on his life) he arrogantly announced that he was still alive and that the gypsy must have been wrong. Almost immediately after this announcement, he was assassinated.



Also, I believe, on this day, we visited Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the largest cathedral in Russia. It was ordered to be built by Alexander I.





After seeing the cathedral, we saw the Russian cruiser Aurora, a ship which played a critical role in the Russian Revolution. In October of 1917, a shot was fired from the ship, signalling the beginning of the attack of the Winter Palace (known today as the Hermitage Museum).


During our second day in Saint Petersburg, we visited Peter and Paul Fortress, home to the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which houses the remains of nearly all of the rulers of Russian, ranging from Peter the Great to the Romanovs. For me, this was one of the highlights of the trip, as I have always wanted to see the tomb of the famous Anastasia.










On this day, we also saw the political prison in which author Fyodor Dostoyevsky (author of Crime and Punishment) and the Decembrists were held.

The next day, Sunday, we visited Catherine the Great's Palace. The road to the palace took us to areas outside of the city where the Russians stopped the Germans from entering Saint Petersburg.





On our last day in Saint Petersburg, Monday, we visited Peterhof, the palace of Peter the Great, founder of Saint Petersburg. There are over 180 fountains on the grounds and it is known as the Versailles of Russia. All of the fountains drain into the Finland Channel. Finland can be seen from the property of Peterhof. Peter the Great designed the palace and all of the fountains himself and it was the first palace built in Saint Petersburg.






After visiting Peterhof, we visited the Smonly Institute, the exact place where the Russian Revolution began. It happened to be about a fifteen minute walk from our hotel! This was also one of my favorite places in Saint Petersburg to visit.